Lu Frazer went with me to look for a room. Lu was an Irish-Canadian girl
with whom I had gone to school. She worked as a stenographer for an
insurance firm, and was very popular with all the girls. There was
something about her that made nearly all the girls go to her and consult
her about this or that, and tell her all about their love affairs.
I think the attraction lay in Lu’s absolute interest in others. She
never talked about her own feelings or affairs, but was always willing
to listen to the outpourings of others. When you told her anything she
was full of sympathetic murmurs, or screams of joy, or expressions of
indignation if the story you told her called for that.
I had formed the habit of going to Lu about all my worries and anxieties
over Reggie, and I always found a willing listener and staunch champion.
The girls called her the Irish Jew, as she kept a bank account and
whenever the girls were short of money they would borrow from Lu, who
would charge them interest. Reggie heartily disliked her without any
just reason. He said:
“She belongs to a class that should by right be scrubbing floors; only
she got some schooling, so she is ticking the typewriter instead.”
Nevertheless, I liked Lu, and in spite of Reggie kept her as my friend,
though she knew that he hated her. When I told her about Reggie’s offer
to pay for the studio, she said:
“Um! Then take as fine a one as you can get, Marion. Soak him good and
hard. I hear he pays a great big price for his own rooms at the
Windsor.”
I explained to her that I only wanted as cheap a place as I could get,
and that as soon as I made enough money, I intended to pay for it
myself.
We looked through the advertisements in the papers, made a list and then
went forth to look for that “studio.”
On Victoria Street, we found a nice big front parlor which seemed to be
just what I wanted. The landlady offered it to me for ten dollars a
month, and when I said that that would do nicely she asked if I were
alone, and when I said I was, she said:
“I hope you work out all day.”
I told her I worked in my room, and that I would make a studio out of
it. Whereupon she said:
“I prefer ladies who go out to work. I had one lady here before, and I
had to put her out. She stayed in bed till eleven and I found cigarette
ashes in her room. Then she had some gentlemen callers, and they
actually shut the door. As this is a respectable house, I went into the
back parlor and watched her through a crack in the folding doors. Then I
goes back and raps on the door, and I says: ‘Young person’--I wouldn’t
call the likes of her a lady--I says: ‘Young person, I want my room. I’m
a lone widow woman and I have to consider my reputation, and the
carryings on in that room is what I won’t have in my house.’ So out she
goes. I am a lady, even if I do keep a rooming-house.”